izigame.me

So, I will preface all of this by saying that I went into this game with low expectations. The Borderlands games were an absolute favorite of mine for the first and second games, but by the time The Pre-Sequel and 3 came out (I forget which order they were released in, I want to say Pre-Sequel was released first) I had pretty much lost interest in the franchise and really FPS games entirely, but when I saw Tiny Tina's my inner RPG addict tag teamed with my nostalgia and convinced me to buy the game after I had beaten Elden Ring for the nth time and was in desperate search of something new.


The Pros

○ Classic Borderlands
And I do mean classic. It felt like playing the original game again. No grand universe-scope plot. Just you as some random nobody going around and beating up on crap until it spits out loot and gold...so much gold!
○ The Comedic Value
This was one of the many things I loved about the original game. Is the humor brash and juvenile? Absolutely. But it's part of what makes the game so unique. I love it.
○ What RPG elements were in the game, were solid
I liked the class mechanics (I've only done Gloombringer (Graveborn/Clawbringer) so far, but I fully intend to give the other classes a test run). The action skills were cool, I really dug the talent trees and the way the different class combos could play off of each other.
○ The utter disregard for the Fourth Wall
Okay. So, I'm a writer. This is one of my favorite literary devices of all time. That direct split where the fourth wall comes down and the characters in the story are fully aware that they're fictional characters is just...yes. I loved it.
○ Tina, Valentine, and Fette
The dynamic between these three was just fantastic. They really brought the game together, and Andy Samburg's performance as Valentine was A plus.
○ Claptrap
Seeing this little guy pop up at various points was a really nice dose of nostalgia. I don't really have much else to say than that without risking spoiling anything, but thank you Gearbox for bringing him into the fold for this one.
○ The Story
Once again, Gearbox managed to do what so few FPS games have been able to manage in the past. We got a compelling narrative alongside great gunplay. I was invested in the story, I wanted to know what was going to happen next. I even went as far as loading an outdated cloud save when my computer decided to seize up right before a cutscene.
○ The Atmosphere
I have to admit, this impressed me a lot. Gearbox managed to encapsulate what it's like to sit at a TTRPG session with an absolute loon of a DM (love you Tina, but you're off your rocker and that's what I love most about you). The bickering between Valentine and Fette, as well as two of them regularly poking holes in Tina's prepared content that resulted in her having to improvise like hell. It was great. It brought back some fond memories from a campaign I ran years ago.


The Cons

○ I felt a little...misled
This is probably my own fault because truth be told, I knew nothing about this game aside from the vague explanation of "It's Borderlands meets D&D." I went into it expecting more RPG elements than it had, something with more focus on sword and board and less guns. But, again. I think I did that one to myself.
○ The guns
So, as we all know from our time spent playing Borderlands (and if you don't know, then now you will), one of the big themes in all the games was the whole "every gun manufacturer has their own gimmick" deal. I feel like I get what Gearbox was trying to do here, that is to blend magic into modern/futuristic firearms, but in my opinion it just fell short.
In the 40 hours or so it took me to work my way to the end of the game whilst being distracted by side quests, I found myself almost always holding onto a Blackpowder weapon that was a huge item level gap behind other options because there wasn't some gimmick to it. It was just a gun.
○ The Character Customization
Okay, I want to preface this with one very important thing. To my knowledge, Gearbox has never given us any sort of customization options besides color (I think that was a thing, that might not even have been) in any of the previous games, so I applaud them for finally doing so.
That being said, I found the whole system utterly clunky and annoying. The initial character creation had so few options, I finally ended up just randomizing things because even with the slider overdrive on there just was not enough diversity of options to really compel me to sit there on character creation for hours on end like I've done with many RPG titles in the past.
○ The Overworld
I felt like I needed a map to read what was essentially the world map. The Overworld, to me, felt like an unnecessary mini game and a pretty perfunctory attempt at giving that open world feel to a game franchise that has traditionally been pretty linear. The shrine piece collecting was tiresome considering the limited reward for finishing each of them, and the side quests were almost without exception nothing more than the same fetch quest with different flavor text.
○The Spells
The only reason I found myself actually using spells was because of the Graveborn talent that granted HP regen on spell use and Morhaim's Blessing which gave you all of those wonderful kill skills every time you activated a spell. They were a utility item for me, half the time I didn't even bother to aim them I just tapped the button to gain the bonuses it would bring. I feel like more could have been done here.
○ Performance Issues
Specs for the PC I played on
◘ Intel i5 9400F 2.90GHz
◘ 8GB DDR4 RAM
◘ NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER
◘ Game data stored on HDD (not 100% sure on speed, but I think 7200)
For starters, I want to state clearly that I am completely aware that I am barely above the minimum requirements to run the game. This is a hand-me-down PC that I'm still working on getting new parts for.
That being said, I ran into constant crashes when I first started playing, and this was with the game's settings set as low as they could go. There was stuttering, and freezing, and all sorts of crazy stuff. I ended up having to go into NVIDIA's control panel and fiddle with some rendering settings just to get the game stable.
Vsync was not an option for me, much to my chagrin (motion sickness issues), but I believe this is a me problem given the strain that vSync puts on the GPU and my GPU's inability to handle it.
Cutscenes were also still a pretty big problem even after my fiddling in the NVIDIA control panel. I had to cut power to the machine via the power supply switch at one point because a cutscene locked my computer up to the point where even holding the power button down wouldn't send a shutdown command.


To Summarize: A solid 8/10 from me

If you read everything above, I just want to say thank you for taking the time. I know that's a lot of opinion to throw about with only 40 hours of gameplay under my belt, but I wanted to write this while it was still fresh in my mind. Despite the nature of my Con's list might indicate, I would still highly recommend the game to anyone and everyone who asks me about it.
I had one hell of a good time playing it, and am going to keep playing it for the post lvl 40 content (at least until the loot pinata stuff you unlock after beating the game gets stale). It's an amazing blend of the FPS and RPG genres and I was very satisfied with my purchase.
I look forward to what the future of the game has to offer in the form of DLC and hope that this turns into as much of a long standing and active title as Borderlands 3 has (which I now fully intend to download on this PC and finally get around to playing).